In The News

Suit: Man Injected with Clothing Dye During Angiogram

The attorney for the man who was mistakenly injected with a green dye normally used for clothing during a procedure at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in 2010 called the event “a fiasco” and could not understand how no one in the operating room at the time thought to question what Elijah Goodwin was being given.  Read more ...

New study shows that the savings from 'tort reform' are mythical

- A new study underscores that tort reform will just hurt women, children and the poor
- Is defensive medicine a big driver of healthcare costs? A new study debunks the notion, again

Joy and Bob Cull are the parents of a 17-year-old UCLA student who died after
a hospital procedure, but whose legal recovery has been limited by
California's MICRA law.

• http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-another-study-shows-why-tort-reform--20140919-column.html
• http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1904758

JAMA Article
Tort reform," which is usually billed as the answer to "frivolous malpractice lawsuits," has been a central plank in the Republican program for healthcare reform for decades.

The notion has lived on despite copious evidence that that the so-called defensive medicine practiced by doctors merely to stave off lawsuits accounts for, at best, 2% to 3% of U.S. healthcare costs. As for "frivolous lawsuits," they're a problem that exists mostly in the minds of conservatives and the medical establishment. Read more ...